Shmups for beginners

[Evilmaxwar]

@Evilmaxwar: I have 2 chip modded classic XBoxes, but I'm very interested in what customizations you are referring to? I've got mameox and a few other emulators on one of 'em, but don't use them these days. Is there perhaps a cool mame frontend to use?

By customization i mean mostly upgraded Hard drive, I have a 240 gb on my hard modded but you can go more than that with the latests bios. I also mean software, by installing and configuring XBMC and installing all the Latest apps and Emulators.

For arcade the very best emulators at the moment are: Coinops Epic and Final burn Legends.

There are fully loaded and optimized package version of both available with video preview of games and such, you need to search a bit in the "usual places".

Coinops runs more games but FBL runs usualy better and has a neat savestate feature that comes handy for grinding the hard parts of your favorite games.
If you end up trying them, a tip, alot of more recent games will benefit from the virtual overclock feature in FBL, like cave shmups (esprade, dodonpachi, guwange...) and games such as Metal slug need it to run perfectly, they will slowdown in the default setting but runs full FPS with cpu at 150%.

[tinotormed]

Ranking the easiest shmups I know by top 10:

10) Espgaluda (all stages are easy except for the last boss)
9) Gunhed (returning to the checkpoints may be a pain, but it should be handled quickly after a few days of playing)
8 ) Super Aleste (too much extends, very powerful weapons given to player)
7) Raiden II (the first loop does it well)
6) Imperishable Night ( good memorization of bullet patterns should finish the game quickly)
5) Thunder Force AC (SFKhoa said: "You just have to learn to memorize the stages one by one."
Yup, even a sever shot should handle the bosses quickly.)
4) Dead Moon ( Same as Thunder Force AC, but requires precise memorization of all stages)
3) Zanac Neo ( if playing as FC-Custom)
2) Twinbee Da! GB ( TOO... MUCH... EXTENDS!! AT 100K)
1) Coryoon: Child of Dragon ( on Normal Difficulty. Good handling on the scoring system may finish the game quickly with many 1ups.
it even has a life bonus either if you restart your PC Engine system.)

[Evilmaxwar]

3) Zanac Neo ( if playing as FC-Custom)

This is my only 1cc at the time, done with the knife edge ship. Quite an easy shmup, gives you lifes all the time, had like 23 extras at the end.

[DocHauser]

Guy who said Lords of Thunder is easy:

you are crazy

I 1CC'd Lords of Thunder on my 2nd attempt. That was the Sega CD version, though. Maybe the PC Engine version was harder.

[Special World]

Guy who said Lords of Thunder is easy:

you are crazy

I 1CC'd Lords of Thunder on my 2nd attempt. That was the Sega CD version, though. Maybe the PC Engine version was harder.

I've played the PC Engine version, yeah.

I get wrecked on every level, and I've 1CCed Futari BL with 2 lives left.

I'm not saying that's particularly impressive, but anything that wrecks somebody who has 1CCed Futari isn't really "easy."

[Voxbox]

Hyper Duel
Darius Gaiden
Battle Bakraid

was my progression. Never 1CC:d Hyper Duel though, which haunts me a little bit.

[BPzeBanshee]

I vote for Armed Police Batrider's normal course (Japan B version) and the Thunder Force games. Any Thunder Force game. Maybe not the first one, I've yet to beat Stage 2 there.

ESPRade isn't exactly an easy game to beat but the control schemes and stuff are easy enough to get into. Just remember that the amount of the B shot bubbles that's still on the enemy when you kill it off with A shot determines the score multiplier (when inserting coin holding the A button and pressing start will show score-related stuff too). I jumped into the bullet-hell genre with this game coming from playing the Raiden series.

[slk486]

Thank you everyone, for your suggestions and advice.

I have quite a few candidates now and will be trying them (for the first time or again) to see which one I like the most. Currently playing a bit of Gunbird 2 (have a soft spot for steampunk) on DC, but find it very challenging after level 3 (north pole?)

Very much looking forward to trying some of the Saturn shooters with the x-arcade, though

[ptoing]

Guy who said Lords of Thunder is easy:

you are crazy

I actually managed to 1CC it on normal on my first serious try, and got to the last level on the hardest difficulty on my 2nd try in that. Considering I am not exactly pro or anything, yes, I would call it easy.
Sega CD version as well here.

[CptRansom]

Guy who said Lords of Thunder is easy:

you are crazy

Substitute "anything Raiden" for "Lords of Thunder" and that's how I feel. Even the first loops utterly destroy me... but I love them anyway. People who say they're super-easy baffle me and make me wonder what I'm doing so horribly wrong.

[Drum]

No such thing as a shooter for beginners really, very few are so daunting/sophisticated that you can't have fun with whatever game however you choose. Just get MAME, download a full torrent of every arcade game ever, work your way through the genre picking whatever looks rad to you personally (some emus have pre-made 'genre' categories, making searching trivial - I like MameXT32, but I don't know if that's fully up to date). Don't ignore the classics, enjoy the obscure entries, don't get married to Cave and you should be fine! Next up, investigate Megadrive/PC Engine as there are some decent games there amidst the junk.

[DocHauser]

Some doujin games might be a good place to start for beginners. Like Genetos, for example (you get 15 lives to start with).

Another one I played recently is Rozen Diadem. It kinda plays like a cross between Touhou and Dangun Feveron, if you can imagine such a thing. On my first 3 goes, I 1CC'd easy, then normal, then hard. I went for the full set but died on Mirage (hardest) level. Decent enough game, though.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tgxii73_5nA

[slk486]

Jeez, is everything about bullet hell today?

Whatever happened to the Toaplan, Irem, and Technosoft spirit?

[BarfHappy]

Jeez, is everything about bullet hell today?

Whatever happened to the Toaplan, Irem, and Technosoft spirit?

It lives in us... we can make what is not done anymore, just put a bit of effort in it.

I like all and every kind of shmups, from galaga to DDP DFK BL . (even though i suck at a lot of them)

[Special World]

Star Parodier
Blazing Lazers
Gate of Thunder

[Jeneki]

I'd rate Otomedius G really high on the easy scale, on the default settings. But I don't have any DLC levels so I'm not sure if they are harder.

[Estebang]

GaiaSeed is the ultimate beginner shmup. Plenty of fairly difficult patterns to traverse with few consequences for being hit, though the threat of death is still there.

[psy]

Speaking purely from my own experience, Touhou 6. First shmup I ever played, and at the time I found it was a perfect mix of challenge and fun with a decent learning curve to it.

[Deca]

Speaking purely from my own experience, Touhou 6. First shmup I ever played, and at the time I found it was a perfect mix of challenge and fun with a decent learning curve to it.

Honestly....my feelings on the series aside, Touhou 6 probably is a really solid intro to danmaku games. It has some challenging patterns but goes easy on you by way of being able to bomb a moment after getting hit and save yourself and showering you in bombs and extends. Definitely not something I'd ever want to play seriously, but playing it when I was first getting into the genre probably helped me get used to figuring out how to respond to different types of patterns and look at the screen.

[Hair]

Jeez, is everything about bullet hell today?

Whatever happened to the Toaplan, Irem, and Technosoft spirit?

Well Toaplan employees became Cave, Takumi etc... and made bullet hell games.

G.rev makes some great modern shooters with old school vibes. I know you said you didn't want to spend the money on Border Down but check out Under Defeat as well (might be cheaper? I dunno)

[saucykobold]

Try Thunder Cross I and II, Gradius, 1943 Kai, and Vimana. They aren't as demanding as most arcade shmups, but you're not going to steamroll through them either.

Ranking the easiest shmups I know by top 10:
7) Raiden II (the first loop does it well)

I think Raiden II is pretty brutal on default settings. It's much harder than the original Raiden, which is saying something.

[DocHauser]

I'd say Storm Blade, if you're looking for an easy arcade 1CC.

Or Fire Hawk, although it's not really recommended because it kinda sucks. You can bomb some of the bosses and they die instantly, and you get your full bomb stock returned at the start of the next level...

[BPzeBanshee]

Jeez, is everything about bullet hell today?

Whatever happened to the Toaplan, Irem, and Technosoft spirit?

Well Toaplan employees became Cave, Takumi etc... and made bullet hell games.

G.rev makes some great modern shooters with old school vibes. I know you said you didn't want to spend the money on Border Down but check out Under Defeat as well (might be cheaper? I dunno)

Let's not forget that Technosoft died and it's zombie incarnates Broken Thunder and Thunder Force VI weren't too popular with the 21st century shmup player. Oh, and unlike Toaplan modern game companies don't throw chairs and food at eachother.

Actually, in all seriousness I vote for the Thunder Force games to be the best sidescrollers. Gradius nuts would disagree with me though.

Also, whoever said the Raiden series was easy should be shot on sight. I recommended that series precisely because they're not a pushover and probably one of the more highlights of the shmup genre. If you can't stand Raiden for it's "shitty graphics and difficulty" you know you're not a true shmupper. Full stop.

[Despatche]

Broken Thunder was bad. Thunder Force VI is just neglected.

I can't stand Raiden for the awkward way the game scrolls; I can't stand Viper Phase 1 for this same reason. It has nothing to do with scoring, graphics, or anything else.

[DocHauser]

Raiden Project on the PS1 included a 'Panorama' option which increased the width of the play area and reduced the lateral-scrolling somewhat (although it was still there). It was a decent alternative for people who didn't want to TATE their screen, I suppose.

(EDIT: I thought that the screen was expanded on Panorama view, but I just looked at a clip of it on Youtube and it just looks like it was stretched. So maybe that wasn't such a good option after all.)

[BPzeBanshee]

Broken Thunder was bad. Thunder Force VI is just neglected.

I can't stand Raiden for the awkward way the game scrolls; I can't stand Viper Phase 1 for this same reason. It has nothing to do with scoring, graphics, or anything else.

True, true, and 'WTF but fair enough' on your points.

I'll admit Broken Thunder was bad (and Ive actually played it) but I can actually see why it was bad, and it's not really the reasons that everyone likes to quote about it. TF VI had too much homage and not enough uniqueness to the game while still thinking it had the balls to go against orthodox TF features (ie. final boss) but that doesn't make it bad at all, neglected is quite a fitting term and from what I heard TF V got just as much neglect when it was supposed to be the last title in the franchise.

As for the Raiden scrolling, I suppose it's more obvious than how Cave does it but then it does actually matter somewhat gameplay-wise (vs Cave does it to look cool). My childhood consisted of watching Raiden Fighters 2000 with it's 'awkward' scrolling so I suppose I'm just accustomed to it, same thing a regular Quake played would say to me when I tell them that I got motion sickness for the first time playing that title for its movement. It's an acquired taste.

Raiden Project on the PS1 included a 'Panorama' option which increased the width of the play area and reduced the lateral-scrolling somewhat (although it was still there). It was a decent alternative for people who didn't want to TATE their screen, I suppose.

That's how I run The Raiden Project on the Wii. It's actually nowhere near the 'screen wreck' that people would think it would be, though I'd still TATE it if I knew for certain I could get it to work. Requiring cheats/Japanese version is a bitch though.

[slk486]

Always loved the Raiden games, but don't really like the scrolling either. Found them dead hard though, but that's probably just me

Put my backup retor crt on it's side the other day, so now I'm enjoying the verts a bit more. Still waiting for the X-Arcade adapters, so I can find the one game to finish first

[Voxbox]

GaiaSeed is the ultimate beginner shmup. Plenty of fairly difficult patterns to traverse with few consequences for being hit, though the threat of death is still there.

I second this.

I actually really liked Gaia Seed. Just thought it should have been harder.

[MEDIEVAL_MIKU]

Dodonpachi, Espgaluda, Battle Bakraid

[Anesthetize]

Dodonpachi, Espgaluda, Battle Bakraid

Meh, I got to the final boss on my second or third credit of Bakraid, but after another 8-10 credits I've only gotten to the final stage like once more. Still a very fun game, and very approachable to someone new to the genre.